Whichever nuance you choose, embracing failure makes for a trendy mythology, especially for the aspiring heroes of innovation. But it’s mostly lip service, while they scramble hysterically to avoid failure at all costs.

On a visit I made to Silicon Valley last week, one entrepreneur, who preferred that his name not be used, explained the drill in frank terms. “Many people here do talk about embracing failure, but that’s usually just hype,” he said. “Many of them fear any kind of failure, and the pressure to succeed is so intense that some new businesses instead find themselves looking for shortcuts.”

Shortcuts make long delays. -- Pippin, Lord of the Rings

The stakes and the paydays are so high that many startups increasingly call on “growth hackers,” who seek to accelerate success … or who at least to lay on a veneer of success for the benefit of investors, media and other key audiences.

The tasks that growth hackers tale on can range from brilliant online marketing to tactics that blur ethical lines. Shortcuts can include hacking one's way instantly to thousands of new subscribers or users, in order to create the illusion of viability. (Here, VentureBeat describes some accepted ways to shortcut your way up the app-store sales charts.) It’s akin to the sort of trickery used by people and brands who “buy” users.

The term hacking implies creativity and imagination and a relentless drive to solve a puzzle. It also suggests an attempt to manipulate, to coerce, to rig, in ways that are contrary to the spirit of willingness to fail. After all, if you have a genuine commitment to embracing failure and learning from it, you won’t won't feel a need to take shortcuts. You would even be revulsed by shortcuts, as they introduce noise into the process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t work.

Yet in hopes of jumpstarting their way to "maximum performance," Hackers now hack their brains with meds and hack their diets with a mix of timeless wisdom and kooky new fads, all in the hope of achieving some alchemy that will ensure success and prevent failure.

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.

But it’s not a complete tragedy that “Fail forward” is mostly hype. After all, the cheerful, "Yay for failure!" chatter has gotten a bit too glib.

Mark O’Connell, writing in Slate, captured the silliness, noting how, in an article on the future of the Virgin Group, Virgin CEO Richard Branson shared the words, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.” Branson then revealed, “The quote is from the playwright, Samuel Beckett, but it could just as easily come from the mouth of yours truly.”

O’Connell pointed out an irony. Beckett, he said, was no giddy risk-taker. He was a gloomy cynic, somewhat laughing at the futility of it all.

Pretending to embrace failure when you don’t is disingenuous and potentially dangerous. Branson can get away with it now that he’s a spectacular success, but those newer to the game can’t afford to and shouldn't pretend to.

A few years ago, entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster argued that the Fail Fast mantra needed to die fast, because it was "wrong, irresponsible, unethical and heartless.” To the entrepreneurs who claim they're boldly trying out new ideas with no worries about crashing against the rocks, he said:

Tell that to the person who wrote you $50,000 of their hard earned money and entrusted you to try your best. Fail fast? How does your brother-in-law feel about that?

Suster was right. Failure can’t be taken lightly.

Forget the cute mantras. No one should ever set out to fail. The key, really, shouldn't be to embrace failure, but to embrace resilience and the ability to bounce back.

And the goal shouldn't be to glorify mistakes and errors and catastrophes, but to cultivate the ability to adapt and learn from them.

Rob Asghar is the author of Leadership Is Hell: How to Manage Well and Escape with Your Soul (2014, Figueroa Press), with all proceeds supporting programs to increase college access for under-served youth in the Los Angeles area.